
Glass_LiC // 



I 



Book _i_2_ 

PRESENTED BY 



THE 



HUGUENOTS. 



BY THE 

REV. W. MORLEY PUNSHON. 



LONDON: 
JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 

M.DCCC.LIX. 
►ne Shilling. 



/fib 1 * 



THE HUGUENOTS. 



EDINBURGH I 

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, 

PAUL'S WORK. 



THE HUGUENOTS. 



REV. W. MOELEY PUNSHON. 

n 



Second vCijiticn. 



LONDON": 

JAMES NISBET AND CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 

M.DCCC.LIX. 



DC 1 1 

,3 






THE HUGUENOTS. 



Feom the Eeformation may be dated a new era in the 
history of history. As presented to us in the writings 
of the older historians, history consisted, for the most 
part, of the bare recital of events, unaccompanied by 
philosophical reflections, or by any attempt to discover 
the mutual relations and tendencies of things. After 
the Eeformation, the adherents of the rival churches, 
each from his own stand-point, moralised upon that 
wondrous revolution, and upon the circumstances, poli- 
tical and social, which introduced and attended it. 
That which had been chronicle became thus contro- 
versy. Writers not only narrated events, but fringed 
them with the hues of their own thought, and impressed 
upon them the bias of their own opinions, and as one 
result of this there sprang up the Philosophy of His- 
tory. Men began to think that if the Eeformation, and 
the events connected with it, might be canvassed in 
their sources and issues, all national changes, all events 

A 



2 THE HUGUENOTS. 

upon the mighty stream of tendency, might be legiti- 
mately subjected to similar criticism. Gradually this 
survey of the past took a loftier stand, and spread over 
a wider range. The causes of the rise and fall of em- 
pires — the elements of national prosperity or decline — 
the obsoleteness or adaptation of various forms of govern- 
ment — the evidences of growth and transition among 
the peoples of mankind, — all in their turn were made 
matters of historical inquiry. Thus history, at first 
narrative and then polemical, has become, in our day, 
a record of progress, a triumphal eulogy of the growth 
of civilization. 

But both writers and readers of history form an un- 
worthy estimate of its province if they restrict it within 
such limits. They only realise its mission who see in 
its transitions the successive developments of Provi- 
dence, ever working without pause and without failure 
the counsel of the Divine will. It is not enough, if we 
would study history aright, that we should follow in the 
track of battle, and listen to the wail of the vanquished, 
and to the shouts of conquerors ; it is not enough that 
we should philosophically analyse the causes of upheaval 
and remodelling; it is not enough that we regard it as 
a school for the study of character, and gaze, with an 
admiration that is almost awe, upon "the world's foster- 
gods," the stalwart nobility of mankind ; it is not enough 
that we should regard it as a chaos of incident, "a 
mighty maze, and all without a plan;" we realise the 



THE HUGUENOTS. 3 

true ideal of history only when we discover God in it, 
shaping its ends for the evolution of His own design, 
educing order from its vast confusions, resolving its 
complications into one grand and marvellous unity, and 
making it a body of completeness and symmetry, with 
Himself as the informing soul. 

Let this faith be fastened on our spirits, and history 
becomes a beautiful study. The world is seen linked to 
Christ — an emerald rainbow round about His throne. 
In His great purpose its destiny of glory is secure. 
There is sure warrant for the expectation of that pro- 
gress of which the poet-watchers have so hopefully 
sung ; progress, unintermitting, through every disaster 
of the past, heralding progress, yet diviner, in every 
possibility of the future. The eye of sense may trace 
but scanty f oreshadowings of the brightness ; there may 
be dark omens in the aspects of the times — clouds may 
gather gloomily around, and the wistful glance, strained 
through the darkness, may discern but faint traces of 
the coming of the day ; but it shall come, and every 
movement brings it nigher — for u the word of the Lord 
hath spoken it/' and that word " endureth for ever/' 

In our study of the history of France, or, indeed, of 
any other nation, we must remember certain peculiarities, 
which, though apparently of small account, are influen- 
tial elements in national progress, and means towards the 
formation of national character. Each race, for example, 
has its distinctive temperament, which it transmits from 



4 THE HUGUENOTS. 

generation to generation. The character which Csesar 
gave of the Gallic tribes two thousand years ago, is, in its 
most noticeable features, their character still. "They 
are warlike, going always armed, ready on all occasions 
to decide their differences by the sword ; a people of 
great levity, little inclined to idleness ; hospitable, gene- 
rous, confiding, and sincere." This transmission of qua- 
lities, while it fosters the pride of a nation, stamps upon 
it an individuality, and prevents the adoption of any 
general changes, which have no affinity with the na- 
tional mind. 

In like manner, the traditions of a nation are potent 
influences in national culture. The memory of its 
heroes, and of the battle-fields where their laurels were 
won ; of its seers of science, its prophets of highest- 
mounted mind ; of its philosophers, the high-priests of 
nature ; of its poets, who have played upon the people's 
heart as upon a harp of many tunes ; of its great men, 
who have excited wonder ; of its good men, who have 
inherited love ; all the old and stirring recollections of 
the romantic past, which pride the cheek and brighten 
the eye ; — all these are substantive tributaries to an 
empire's education, and aid us in forming our estimate 
of its career and destiny. 

But more potent than either of the causes we have 
mentioned, are those external agencies which from time 
to time arise in the course of events, to stamp a new 
form and pressure on the world. The sacred isolation of 



THE HUGUENOTS. 5 

the Hebrew commonwealth — the schools of Greece — 
the militocracy of Borne — the advent of the Redeemer 
— the Mohammedan iinjDosture — feudalism with its 
blended barbarity and blessing — the Crusades — the in- 
vention of Printing — the Reformation, — all these were 
not only incidents, but powers, exerting each of them 
an appreciable influence upon the character of the 
nations of mankind. In tracing the history of the 
Huguenots, therefore, we are not merely following the 
fortunes of a proscribed people, nor reciting a tale of 
individual suffering — we are depicting the history of 
France, we are evolving the subtle cause of that mys- 
terious something; which has been, through a Ions; 
course of years, an element of national disquiet, which 
has alternately impelled the attack of passion, or 
furthered the schemes of tyranny, and under which 
that sunny and beautiful land has groaned in bondage 
until now. 

The doctrines of the Reformation took early root in 
France. The simultaneous appearance of its confessors 
in different countries, is one amongst the many col- 
lateral j)roofs of its divine origin. Movements which 
men originate are local and centralised, arranged in 
concert, and gathering ripeness from correspondence 
and sympathy. When God works there is no barrier 
in geographical boundaries, nor in the absence of inter- 
course. He drops the truth-seed, and it falls into 
world-wide furrows. When the hour is ripe — full grown, 



6 THE HUGUENOTS. 

heroic, and ready, there springs forth the MAN*. Events 
had long been preparing the way for the mighty change. 
In the Church, whether through ignorance or faithless- 
ness, pagan ceremonies had been grafted upon the 
" reasonable service " of the worship ; discipline had 
become rather a source of immorality than a guard to 
holiness; the traffic in indulgences had shaken the 
foundations of every social and moral bond ; and the 
masses of the people were irritated at the pretensions 
of a religion which had its tariff of vice, a price for 
every crime, and at the rapacity of a priesthood which 
never said, " It is enough." Former protests against 
encroachment and error, though crushed by the strong 
hand of power, were not utterly forgotten. The voices 
of Claude and Vigilantius yet echoed in the hearts of 
many; traditions of Albigensian confessors, and of 
saints in Vaudois valleys, were in numerous homes ; 
the martyr songs of the Lollard and the Hussite 
lingered — strange and solemn music — in the air. By 
and by, in cotemporaneous blessing came the revival 
of learning, and the invention of printing. The com- 
mon mind, waking from its long, deep slumber, felt 
itself hungry after knowledge, and more than three 
thousand works were given to appease its appetite in 
the course of seventy years. The sixteenth century 
dawned upon nations in uneasiness and apprehension. 
Kings, warriors, statesmen, scholars, people, all seemed 
to move in a cloud of fear, or under a sense of mystery 



THE HUGUENOTS. 7 

as if haunted by a presentiment of change. Everything 
was hushed into a very agony of pause, as nature holds 
her breath before the crash of the thunder. Men grew 
strangely bold and outspoken. Eeuchlin vindicated 
the claims of science against the barbarous teaching of 
the times. Ulrich von Hutten, who could fight for 
truth if he had not felt its power, flung down the gage 
of battle with all the knightly pride of chivalry. Eras- 
mus, the clear-headed and brilliant coward, lampooned 
-monks and doctors, until cardinals, and even the pope 
himself, joined in the common laughter of the world. 
All was ready, — the forerunners had fulfilled their 
mission, and the Reformation came. 



In 1517, Tetzel, the indulgence-pedler, very unwittingly 
forced Luther into the van of the battle, and the ninety- 
five propositions were posted on the cathedral at 
Wittemberg. In 1518, Bernardin Samson, another 
craftsman in the sorry trade, performed in Switzerland 
the same kind office for Ulrich Zwingli ; and in 1521, 
while Luther was marching to the Diet of Worms, Le- 
fevre, in a green old age, and Farel, in a generous youth, 
proclaimed the new evangel in the streets and temples 
of one of the cities of France. The city of Meaux was 
the first to receive the new doctrine, and Bricjonnet, its 
bishop, a sincere protester against error — though not 
made of the stern stuff which goes to the composition of 
heroes — published and circulated widely an edition of 
the four gospels in the French language. So rapid was 
the spread of the truth, so notable the amendment in 
morals throughout the provinces which were pervaded 
by it, so loud were the complaints among the monks 
and priests, of lessened credit and diminished income, 
that the dignitaries both of Church and State became 
alarmed and anxious ; and as the readiest way of put- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 9 

ting the testimony to silence, they began to proscribe 
and imprison the witnesses. 

The doctors of the Sorbonne had already declared 
Luther's doctrine to be blasphemous and insolent, 
" such as should be answered less by argument than 
by fire and sword/' The parliament, though no friend 
to monkish rule, could not understand why, when 
people were satisfied with one form of government, 
they should want two forms of religion. The court, 
remembering that the pope had an army at his back 
which would have astonished St Peter not a little, even 
in his most martial moments, and wishful to secure 
the aid of that army in the wars of Italy, favoured the 
spirit of persecution. Louisa of Savoy, queen-regent 
in the absence of her son, who was then a prisoner at 
Madrid, asked the Sorbonne, in 1523, " by what means 
could the damnable doctrines of Luther be soonest 
extirpated from the most Christian kingdom \ n and the 
clergy, not to be outdone in zeal, held councils, at 
which cardinals and archbishops presided, in which 
they accused the reformer of "execrable conspiracy," 
exhorted the king "to crush the viper's doctrines/' 
and proposed to visit yielding heretics with penance 
and prison, and to hand over obstinate ones to the 
tender mercies of the public executioner. 

This combination of purpose soon resulted in acts 
of atrocity and blood. The names of Leclerc, Pavanes, 
and the illustrious Louis de Berquin, deserve to be 



10 THE HUGUENOTS. 

handed down to posterity as the proto-martyrs of the 
Reformation in France. In 1535 there was a solemn 
procession through the streets of Paris. Never had 
such a pomp of relics been paraded before the awe- 
struck faithful. The veritable head of St Louis, a bit 
of the true cross, one of the nails thereof, the real 
crown of thorns, and the actual spear-head which had 
pierced the body of the Saviour — all were exhibited to 
an innumerable crowd of people, who swarmed upon 
the house-tops, and sat perched upon every available 
balcony or abutment of stone. The shrine of St Gene- 
vieve, the patron saint of Paris, was carried very ap- 
propriately by the corporation of butchers, who had 
prepared themselves for the occasion by a fast of 
several days' duration. Cardinals and archbishops 
abounded, until the street was radiant with copes, and 
robes, and mitres, like a field of the cloth of gold. In 
the midst of the procession came the king, bareheaded, 
as became a dutiful son of the Church, and carrying a 
lighted taper, for the blessed sun was not sufficient, or 
its light was too pure and kind. High mass was cele- 
brated, and then came the choicest spectacle of the 
raree-show. Six Lutherans were burned. With their 
tongues cut out, lest their utterances of dying heroism 
should palsy the arm of the hangman, or affect the 
convictions of the crowd, a moveable gallows was 
erected, which alternately rose and fell — now plunging 
them into the fire, and now withdrawing them for a 



THE HUGUENOTS. 11 

brief space from the flame, until, by the slow torture, 
they were entirely consumed. Such was the villanous 
punishment of the estrapade — a refinement of cruelty 
which Heliogabalus might have envied, and which even 
the Spanish Inquisition had failed to invent for its 
Jewish and Saracen martyrdoms. The executions were 
purposely delayed until Francis was returning to the 
Louvre. He gazed upon his dying subjects, butchered 
for no crime, and the eyes of ecclesiastical and courtly 
tigers in his train, glared with savage gladness at the 
sight of Lutheran agony. 

Shortly after came the yet more horrible butcheries 
of Merindol and Cabrieres, by which the Vaudois of 
Provence, a whole race of the most estimable and 
industrious inhabitants of France, were exterminated 
because of their religion. Men, women, and children 
were slain in indiscriminate massacre, some in the 
frenzy of passion, others, more inexcusably, after a 
show of trial, and therefore in cold blood. Their cities 
were razed to the ground, their country turned into a 
desert, and the murderers went to their work of carnage 
with the priests' baptism on their swords, and were 
rewarded for its completion by the prayers and bless- 
ings of the clergy. 

The usual results of persecution followed. In the 
fine old classical fable, the dragon's teeth were sown in 
the field, and the startling harvest was a host of armed 
men. It is a natural tendency of persecution to outwit 



12 THE HUGUENOTS. 

itself. A voice is hushed for the while, but eloquent 
though it may have been in its life, there issues from 
the sepulchre of the slain witness more audible and 
influencing oratory. A community is broken up, and 
companies of worshippers are scattered in many lands 
of exile ; but though there be dispersion of families, 
unlike the banishment of Babel, there is no confusion 
of tongues ; each in his far-off wandering becomes a 
centre of truth and blessing, until "their sound has 
gone forth through all the earth, and their words to 
the end of the world/' 

There is something in the inner consciousness of a 
religious man which assures him that it must be so. 
You may practise on a corpse without let or hindrance. 
Wrap it in grave clothes, it will not complain ; perpe- 
trate indignities upon it, it will be sealed in silence ; 
let it down into the cold earth, no rebuke will protest 
against its burial. But life is a more intractable thing. 
With a touch of the old Puritan humour, it abides not 
the imposition of hands ; it will move at liberty and 
speak with freedom. Cast among barbarous peoples, 
where men babble in strange speech around him, the 
man who has divine life in his soul will somehow 
make it felt ; the joy of his bounding spirit will speak 
and sparkle through the eye, if it cannot vibrate on 
the tongue ; the new song will thrill from the lips, 
though there be only the echoes to answer it ; how 
much more when there is the neighbourhood <rf sensi- 
tive and impressible men ! 



THE HUGUENOTS. 13 

• Hence, you will not wonder that it happened to the 
Eef ormed as it happened to the Israelites of old, " The 
more they were vexed, the more they multiplied and 
grew/'' The progress of the Eeformation during the clos- 
ing years of the reign of Francis I. and during that of his 
son and successor, Henry II., was rapid and continual. 
Several large provinces declared for the new doctrines ; 
and " some of the most considerable cities in the king- 
dom, — Bourges, Orleans, Eouen, Lyons, Bordeaux, 
Toulouse, Montpellier, and 'the brave' Eochelle, — were 
peopled with the Eeformed." It was calculated that, 
in a few years, they amounted to nearly one-sixth of 
the entire population, and almost all classes ranged 
beneath the Eeformation banner. The provincial 
nobles were nearly all secretly inclined to it. Mer- 
chants who travelled into other countries witnessed 
the development, under its influence, of industrial pro- 
gress, and the display of the commercial virtues, and 
brought home impressions in its favour. The people 
of the tiers-etat, who had received a literary education, 
perceived its intellectual superiority, and on that 
account were prejudiced to give it welcome. " Espe- 
cially/' says Florimond de Eeimond, a Eoman Catholic 
writer, with a simplicity that is amusing, but with an 
ingenuousness that does him credit, — " Especially pain- 
ters, watchmakers, goldsmiths, image-makers, book- 
sellers, printers, and others, who in their crafts have 
any nobleness of mind, were most easily surprised/' 



14 THE HUGUENOTS. 

There were, indeed, scarcely any classes which collec- 
tively adhered to Eome, except the higher ecclesiastics, 
the nobles of the court, and the fanatic and licentious 
mob of the good city of Paris. This was the * purest 
and most flourishing era of the Eeformation in France. 
They of the Eeligion, as they were afterwards called, 
meddled not with the diplomacy of cabinets, with the 
intrigues of faction, nor with the feuds of the rival 
houses of the realm. " Being reviled, they reviled not 
again ; being persecuted, they threatened not, but com- 
mitted themselves to Him who judgeth righteously," 
and the record of their constancy and triumph is on 
high. 



The Reformation in France may be considered as hav- 
ing been fully established at the time of the first 
Synod. This was held at Paris in 1559. From this 
assembly, to which eleven churches sent deputies, were 
issued the '" Confession of Faith" and the " Articles of 
Discipline/"' which, with little alteration, were handed 
down as the doctrinal and ecclesiastical standards of 
the Protestants of France. 

The reign of Henry II. was mainly distinguishable for 
the Edict of Chateaubriand, which made heresy a civil 
as well as an ecclesiastical offence, and for the mas- 
sacre of the Eue St Jacques, and the arrest and sen- 
tence of the celebrated Anne Dubourg. The martyr- 
dom of this distinguished and pious councillor, which 
the king's death by the lance of Montgomery did not 
suspend, inspired many with the persuasion that the 
faith professed by such a man could not be a bad one, 
"melted the students of the colleges into tears," and 
more damage accrued to Rome from that solitary 
martyr-pile than from the labours of a hundred minis- 
ters, with all their sermons. 



16 THE HUGUENOTS. 

Meanwhile the affairs of the kingdom were daily 
involved in newer and more embarrassing complica- 
tions. The new king, Francis II., the husband of the 
unhappy Mary Stuart, was imbecile in mind, and had 
a sickly constitution of body. The factions Of the 
realm, which had been partially organised in the pre- 
ceding reign, practised upon his youth and feebleness, 
that he might aid them in their struggles for power. 
There were at this time three notable factions in the 
field, and it may be well for a moment to suspend our 
interest in the narrative, that the dramatis personce 
may appear upon the scene. 

The leaders of the various parties were all remark- 
able men. The real heads of the Catholic party were 
the two celebrated brothers of the house of Guise. 
Claude de Lorraine, the ancestor of the family, came to 
seek his fortune in France " with a staff in his hand, 
and one servant behind him ;" but his immediate de- 
scendants were all in high places, and wielded, some of 
them, a more than regal power. Francis, Duke of 
Guise, the eldest son, was a skilful and high-spirited 
soldier, whose trusty blade had carved its way to renown 
in many a well-fought field. He possessed a sort of 
barbaric generosity, but was irascible, unscrupulous, and 
cruel. He pretended to no learning save in martial 
tactics, and held his religion as a sort of profitless 
entail, which, with his name, he had inherited from his 
father. " Look," said he to his brother, after the mas- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 17 

sacre at Vassy, "at the titles of these Huguenot 
books." " No great harm in that/' replied the clerkly 
cardinal ; "that is the Bible." " The Bible I" rejoined 
the Duke, in extreme surprise ; " how can that be ? 
This book was only printed last year, and you say the 
Bible is fifteen hundred years old/' Knowing little, 
and caring less, about religious controversies, a man of 
ceaseless energy and ready sword, he was the strong 
hand which the crafty head of the cardinal wielded at 
his will. 

His brother, Charles of Lorraine, Cardinal and Arch- 
bishop of Bheims, of courtly address and pleasing 
elocution, sagacious in foresight, and skilful in intrigue, 
was the soul of all the projects which, ostensibly for 
the honour of the Holy Church, were really for the 
advancement of the fortunes of the House of Lorraine. 
He was a man of no personal valour, but influential 
enough to make a jest of his own cowardice. The pope 
of that time — for, in spite of presumed infallibility, popes 
and cardinals do not always see eye to eye — was uneasy 
at his ambition, and was accustomed to call him " the 
pope on the other side the mountains ;" and, in fact, it 
was the dream of his restless life to see the crown of 
France upon his brother's brow, and the tiara of the 
supreme pontificate encircling his own. 

The chiefs of the Politiques, as they were called, the 
middle party in the state, who counselled mutual con- 
cession and forbearance, were the Chancellor l'Hopital 

B 



18 THE HUGUENOTS. 

and the Constable de Montmorency. The chancellor 
was one of those statesmen of whom France has reason 
to be proud. A man of stern integrity, and of high 
principle, he worked his way through various offices of 
trust into one of the highest positions in the Parliament 
of Paris. As superintendent of the royal finances, by 
his good management of affairs, and by his inflexible 
resistance to the rapacity of court favourites, he hus- 
banded the national resources, and replenished the 
exhausted treasury. Wise in counsel, tolerant in spirit, 
and with views broader than his age, he was the unfail- 
ing advocate of religious freedom. For his efforts in 
this behalf, he was ultimately deprived of his seals, and 
ran in danger of being included in the massacre of St 
Bartholomew. So great was his peril, that the Queen- 
mother sent a troop of horse with express orders to save 
him. When they told him that those who made out 
the list of proscription had forgiven him, " I was not 
aware," was his sublime reply, " that I had done any- 
thing to merit either death or pardon." 

The Constable de Montmorency was a rough-hewn 
valiant knight, rude in speech and blunt in bearing, of 
an obstinate disposition and of a small soul. He had 
two articles in his creed, — the first, that he was the first 
Christian baron — and the second, that the kings whom 
he served were Catholics. From these he deduced the 
very substantial corollary that it was his duty to shew 
no quarter to heresy wherever it was found. Hence it 



THE HUGUENOTS. 19 

is almost wonderful that lie should have allied himself 
■with the Moderates in counsel, but the Chatillons, the 
chief Huguenot family, were his nephews, and he had 
a sort of old-fashioned loyalty towards the princes of 
the blood. The Abbe Brantome has transmitted to us 
the particulars of his extraordinary piety; he fasted 
regularly every Friday, and failed not to repeat his 
paternosters every morning and every night. It is said, 
however, that he occasionally interjected some matters 
which were not in the Rubric. " Go and hang such a 
man for me ; tie that other to a tree ; make that one 
run the gauntlet ; set fire to everything all round for a 
quarter of a league" — and then, with exemplary preci- 
sion, would begin again just where he had left off, and 
finish his aves and credos as if nothing had happened. 
The individual whom circumstances rather than merit 
had thrown into the position of one of the leaders of 
the Huguenot party, was Antoine de Bourbon, the hus- 
band of the heroic Jeanne D Albert, and, through her, 
titular King of Navarre. Indolent and vacillating — a 
mere waif flung upon the wave — a Calvinist preachment 
or a Bomish auto-da-ffe were equally in his line, and 
might both rejoice in the honour of his patronising pre- 
sence. Destitute both of energy and principle, his 
character shaped itself to the shifting occurrences of 
each successive day, or to the wayward moods of each 
successive companion. The purpose of his life, if that 
may be so .called which attained no definiteness, and 



20 THE HUGUENOTS. 

resulted in no action, was to exchange his nominal 
sovereignty for a real one, over any country, and upon 
any terms. He was one of those whom the words of 
the poet accurately describe : — 

u So fair in show, but, ah ! in act 

So over-run with vermin troubles, 
The coarse, sharp -corner'd ugly Fact 

Of Life collapses all his bubbles; 
Like a clear fountain, his desire 

Exults and leaps toward the light; 
In every drop it says ( Aspire/ 

Striving for more ideal height; 
And as the fountain, falling thence, 

Crawls baffled through the common gutter, 
So, from his bravery's eminence, 
He shrinks into the present tense 

Unking' d by sensual bread and butter." 

To say that he abjured his faith were to do him too 
much honour. The pope's legate, the cardinals, the 
princes of Lorraine, and the Spanish ambassador angled 
for him as for an enormous gudgeon, and they baited 
the hook with crowns. Tunis in Africa was suggested 
as a somewhat desirable sovereignty. Sardinia, which 
was represented fertile as Arcadia, and wealthy as Alad- 
din's cave, might be had on easy terms. Nay, Scotland 
dangled from the glittering line, and the poor befooled 
hungerer after royalty put up his conscience to per- 
petual auction, and, like others of such unworthy traf- 
fickers, " did not increase his wealth by its price." The 
Eeformation owes nothing to Antoine of Bourbon. By 
him the selfish and the worldly were introduced into its 






THE HUGUENOTS. 21 

claims, and, shorn of its spiritual strength, it dwindled 
in after-reigns into a politico-religious partisanship, 
linking its high destinies with the personal ambitions 
of the rufflers of the camp and court, a menial at the 
levee of ministers, a sycophant in the audience-rooms 
of kings. Shame on thee, Antoine of Navarre! renegade 
and companion of persecutors ! the likeness of a kingly 
crown is decoration enough for a puppet-head like thine. 
Pass quickly out of sight! for we are longing to look 
upon a MAN. 

Behold him ! Of ordinary stature, his limbs well 
proportioned, his countenance calm and tranquil, and 
with a lambent glory resting on it, as if he had come 
recently from some Pisgah of divine communion — his 
voice agreeable and kindly, though, like Moses, slow of 
speech — his complexion good, betokening purity amid 
courtly licentiousness, and temperance in an age of 
excesses — his bearing dignified and graceful — a skilful 
captain, an illustrious statesman, magnanimous in good 
fortune, unruffled in disaster — a patriot whom no in- 
gratitude could alienate — a believer whose humble 
piety probed its own failings to the quick, but flung 
the mantle of its charity over the errors of others- 
Behold a man ! That is Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral 
of France, the military hero of the Eeformation, whose 
only faults seem to have been excessive virtues — who 
was irresolute in battle, because too loyal to his king — • 
who was lacking in sagacity, because, his own heart all 



22 THE HUGUENOTS. 

transparent, lie could scarcely realise the perfidy of 
others — Gaspard de Coligny, who lived a saint — Gas- 
pard de Coligny, who died a martyr — one of the best, if 
not the greatest of Frenchmen. France engraves upon 
her muster-roll of worthies no braver or more stain- 
less name. 

Whilst the rival leaders w T ere contending for power, 
another influence, which all by turns feared and courted, 
was that of the queen-mother, the many-sided Catharine 
de Medicis. It is humiliating to our common nature 
to dwell upon the portraiture which, if history says 
sooth, must be drawn of this remarkable woman. Her 
character is a study. Remorseless without cruelty, and 
sensual without passion — a diplomatist without prin- 
ciple, and a dreamer without faith — a wife without 
affection, and a mother without feeling — we look in 
vain for her parallel. She stands " grand and gloomy, 
in the solitude of her own originality/' See her in her 
oratory ! devouter Catholic never told his beads. See 
her in the cabinet of Ruggieri the astrologer ! never 
glared fiercer eye into Elfland's glamour and mystery — 
never were philter and potion (alas ! not all for heal- 
ing) mixed with firmer hand. See her in the council- 
room ! royal caprice yielded to her commanding will ; 
soldiers faltered beneath her falcon glance who never 
cowered from sheen of spears, nor blenched at flashing 
steel ; and hoary-headed statesmen who had made 
politics their study, confessed that she outmatched 



THE HUGUENOTS. 23 

them in her cool and crafty wisdom. See her in dis- 
aster! more philosophical resignation never mastered 
suffering; braver heroism never bared its breast to 
storm. Strange contradictions are presented by her, 
which the uninitiated cannot possibly unravel. Power 
was her early and her life-long idol, but when within 
her grasp she let it pass away, enamoured rather of the 
intrigue than of the possession ; a mighty huntress, who 
flung the game in largess to her followers, finding her 
own royal satisfactions in the excitement of the chase. 
Of scanty sensibilities, and without natural affection, 
there were times when she laboured to make young 
lives happy — episodes in her romantic life, during 
which the woman's nature leaped into the day. Toiling 
constantly for the advancement of her sons, she shed 
no tear at their departure, and sat intriguing in her 
cabinet, while an old blind bishop and two aged domes- 
tics were the only mourners who followed her son 
Francis to the tomb. Sceptical enough to disbelieve 
in immortality, she was prudent enough to provide, as 
she imagined, for any contingency; hence she had 
her penances to purchase heaven, and her magic to pro- 
pitiate hell. Queenly in her bearing, she graced the 
masque or revel, smiling in cosmetics and perfumes — 
but Vicenza daggers glittered in her boudoir, and she 
culled for those who crossed her schemes flowers of 
most exquisite fragrance, but their odour was death. 
-Such was Catharine de Medicis,. the sceptred sorceress 



24 THE HUGUENOTS. 

of Italia's land, for whom there beats no pulse of ten- 
derness, around whose name no clinging memories 
throng, on whom we gaze with a sort of constrained 
and awful admiration, as upon an embodiment of 
power,— but power cold, crafty, passionless, cruel — the 
power of the serpent, which cannot fail to leave impres- 
sions on the mind, but impressions of basilisk eye, and 
iron fang, and deadly gripe, and poisonous traiL 

The first false step of the Protestants was the enter- 
prise known as the conspiracy of Amboise. Exas- 
perated by petty persecutions, and goaded by the 
remembrance of their wrongs, they plotted to expel the 
Guises from the land, and to restore the real govern- 
ment to the king. Terrible was the vengeance which 
succeeded. Twelve hundred conspirators were put to 
death without investigation or trial, until the Loire was 
choked with the corpses of those who had been flung 
into its waters to drown. The immediate results of 
this ill-concerted scheme were to establish the Duke of 
Guise as lieutenant-general of the kingdom, with a 
powerful army at his bidding, and to enable the cardi- 
nal to fulminate an edict against heresy, by which it 
might be judged and doomed at an Episcopal tribunal 
This roused the Huguenots to passion, and in some 
parts of the provinces to arms. 

Then followed the Fontainebleau assembly, at which, 
in presence of the king and nobles, Coligny presented 
the petition of the Reformed, asking for the free perform- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 25 

ance of Protestant worship. " Your petition bears no 
signature/' said Francis. " True, sire," was the admiral's 
reply ; " but if you will allow us to meet for the pur- 
pose, I will undertake, in one day, to obtain fifty thou- 
sand signatures in Normandy alone." Such an assertion, 
from such lips, was no unholy gasconade, but indicated 
a threatening and deep reality of danger. As the 
result of the debates which followed, as no one seemed 
able to grasp the great idea of liberty of conscience, it 
was agreed that a national council should be summoned 
to determine upon the religious faith of France. The 
princes of Lorraine had prepared for this convocation 
arguments that were somewhat peculiar. One was the 
assassination of the princes of Bourbon ; the other was 
the banishment of every one who refused to sign a creed 
of the cardinal's devising — "a creed/' says Jean de 
Serres, " that no man of the religion would have either 
approved or signed for a thousand lives." The first of 
these projects failed from some touch of humanness or 
cowardice which arrested the kingly dagger ; the second 
failed because a pale horse, in the meanwhile, stood 
before the palace gate, and the rider passed the warders 
without challenge, and summoned the young king to 
give account at a higher tribunal. The death of Fran- 
cis was, in fact, a revolution. For awhile the court 
became Calvinist, feasting in Mid-Lent upon all the 
delicacies of the season, making sport of images and 
indulgences, of the worship of the saints, and of the 



26 THE HUGUENOTS. 

authority of the pope. Another intrigue, however, 
restored the Guises to power, and their return was 
marked by the edict of 1561, which shewed at once the 
animosity and the caution of the princes of Lorraine. 
The private worship of the Huguenots was sanctioned, 
but their public celebrations were forbidden, and they 
were promised a national council to adjust all dif- 
ferences of religion. This council met in the convent 
of Poissy, on the 9th of the following September. 
The boy-king, Charles IX., sat upon the throne. Six 
cardinals, with him of Lorraine at their head, and 
doctors, whose name was Legion, appeared as the 
Catholic champions. Twelve ministers and twenty- 
two deputies from the Calvinistic churches were, by 
and by, admitted, rather as culprits than as disputants. 
The Genevese prized the safety of Calvin so highly, 
that they required securities for his protection, in the 
absence of which, the more courtly and eloquent Beza 
appeared in his stead. The discussion, like all others, 
failed utterly of the purpose which it was intended to 
effect. A dispute arose about the laws of the combat, 
and about the very issue that was put upon its trial. 
What were to be the questions of debate ? " The whole 
round of the doctrines," said the Huguenots. " The 
authority of the Church, and the Real Presence in the 
sacrament," said the creatures of the cardinal. What 
was to be the test ? " Holy Scripture as interpreted by 
tradition, and by the Fathers and Councils," said the 
followers of the Papacy. " Holy Scripture alone/' was 



THE HUGUENOTS. 27 

the sturdy reply of the Keformed. Who are to adjudge 
the victory ? " The civil government/' said Beza and 
his friends. "The Church authorities/' was the Ro- 
manist rejoinder. Why dispute at all when all the 
conditions of controversy seem so hopelessly involved ? 
Both parties agree in the answer — " Not to overcome 
our antagonists, but to encourage our friends." We 
shall not wonder, after this, that the colloquy at Poissy 
came to a speedy and resultless conclusion. The 
Huguenots were at this time estimated by the chan- 
cellor to amount to one-fourth of the population, and 
though such calculations are of necessity uncertain, it 
is evident that they were no obscure sectaries, but a 
compact and powerful body, who could demand privi- 
lege in worship and redress from wrong.* The 
Guises, however, were incessant in their hostility ; and 
after the secession of the frivolous Antoine of Navarre, 
who, with the proverbial animosity of the renegade, 
was rancorous in his hatred of his former friends, they 
sought aid for the extirpation of heresy from the forces 
of Spain. As the Duke of Guise was marching to 
Paris in support of this enterprise, he heard the bells 
of the little town of Vassy, in the province of Cham- 
pagne, summoning the faithful to their prayers. With 
an oath, he exclaimed, " They shall soon Huguenotize 
in a very different manner/' and he ordered them to 
be attacked. Unarmed as they were, they could only 

* An edict was passed in January 1562, which permitted them to 
meet for worship without the walls of any city of France. 



28 THE HUGUENOTS. 

defend themselves with stones. It is said that one of 
these stones struck the Duke upon the face, and that, 
in his anger, he let loose upon them all the fury of his 
armed retainers. Sixty were left dead upon the spot, 
and two hundred more were severely, some mortally, 
wounded. The news of this onslaught was carried 
speedily to Paris, and the Duke on his entry had a 
triumphal ovation from the populace, whom the priests 
had taught to regard him as the Judas Maccabaeus of 
his country — the heaven-sent and heaven-strengthened 
defender of their endangered faith. Encouraged by 
his success, he seized upon the persons of the queen- 
mother and her son, and kept them in strict, but in 
gentle captivity. Then the whole land was roused. 
The butchery of those unarmed worshippers was the 
red rain which made the battle-harvest grow. Fearfully 
was the slaughter of those slain witnesses avenged ; for 
from the massacre at Vassy, and from the seizure of 
the king, may be dated the commencement of the sad 
wars of religion ; and of all wars there are none so fierce 
and so terrible as those of intestine strife, when fanati- 
cism sounds the clarion, and nerves the frantic hand. 

w When rival nations, great in arms, 

Great in power, in glory great, 
Rush in ranks at war's alarms, 

And feel a temporary hate ; 
The hostile storms but rage awhile, 

And the tired contest ends ; 
But oh ! how hard to reconcile 

The foes that once were friends." 



It is not our province to dwell largely upon the sad 
period which followed, nor to enter here into the vexed 
question as to how far the use of the sword is, under 
any circumstances, defensible for the maintenance of 
religion. War is a terrible scourge, one of the direst 
and most appalling of the effects of sin. There is no 
more Christianity in the consecration of banners than 
there is in the baptism of bells — they who battle for 
the glory of renown, or for the lust of dominion — sin. 
The conqueror, who fights for conquest merely, is but 
a butcher on a grander scale : but when it becomes a 
question of life and liberty, of hearthstone and altar, of 
babes and home, it is a somewhat different matter ; and 
one can hardly fancy a sublimer sight than " the eter- 
nal cross, red with the martyr's blood, and radiant 
with the pilgrim's hope, high in the van of men deter- 
mined to be free ;" though even in the sternest necessity 
that can compel to arms, so deceitful is the human 
heart, so easily can it mistake pride for patriotism, and 
baptize the greed of glory with the inspirations of reli- 
gion, that we must ever feel that the camp should not 



30 THE HUGUENOTS. 

be the chosen school for godliness, and that they have 
deepest need to claim a Saviour's intercession who 
have to meet their Maker with sword-hilt stained with 
slaughter, and with the hands uplifted in the dying 
litany, all crimsoned with a brother's blood. The senti- 
ments of Agrippa d'Aubigne, an historian of the six- 
teenth century, (whose name has again become illus- 
trious in the field of historic literature in the person of 
Dr Merle d'Aubigne, his lineal descendant,) are worthy 
of being mentioned here. " It is ever worthy of note, 
that whenever the Eeformed were put to death under 
the form of justice, however unjust and cruel the pro- 
ceedings, they presented their necks, and never made 
use of their hands. But when public authority and 
the magistrates, tired of kindling the piles, had flung 
the knife into the hands of the mob, and by the tumults 
and wholesale massacres of France had deprived justice 
of her venerable countenance, and neighbour murdered 
neighbour by sound of trumpet and by beat of drum, 
who could forbid these unhappy men opposing force to 
force, and sword to sword, and catching the contagion 
of a just resentment from a resentment destitute of all 
justice? Let foreign nations decide which party has 
the guilt of civil war branded on their forehead/' 

Both parties asked for aid from other nations in the 
struggle. Spearmen from Spain, and soldiers from 
Italy, obeyed the summons of the pontiff to the new 
crusade ; Germans and English enrolled for the assist- 



THE HUGUENOTS. SI 

ance of the Huguenots ; and the Swiss, with mercenary 
impartiality, stood ready for the cause which had the 
longest purse and readiest pay. Both sides put forth 
manifestoes, both professed to be moved with zeal for 
the glory of God, and both swore fealty to their lawful 
sovereign. At the commencement of hostilities the 
Huguenots gained some advantages, but they wasted 
their time in useless negotiation while their adversaries 
acted with vigour. They laboured, indeed, under the mis- 
fortune of being led by the Prince of Conde, who, though 
a brave soldier, was of the blood-royal of France, and 
might one day, if he did not commit himself too far, 
be Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. It is a grievous 
thing, in a struggle for principle, to be cursed with a 
half-hearted commander. Fancy the sturdy Puritans 
of our own country, led to battle by some gay Duke 
of Monmouth, instead of " trusting in God, and keep- 
ing their powder dry," at the bidding of Ireton and 
Cromwell ! 

The death of Antoine of Navarre, who was mortally 
wounded at the siege of Eouen, the fall of Marshal St 
Andr^ on the field of Dreux, and the assassination of 
the Duke of Guise, which to the soured temper of the 
homicide seemed but a legitimate act of reprisal, were 
the occasions of that suspension of hostilities which 
resulted in the hollow treaty of Amboise. It satisfied 
neither party, and was at best only an armed truce, 
during which frightful enormities were committed on 



32 THE HUGUENOTS. 

both sides. War speedily broke out again, and the 
Catholics triumphed on the plains of St Denis, though 
the Constable de Montmorency, the last of the trium- 
virs, died of a wound which he had received upon the 
field. Again, during the progress cf the conflict, did 
the Huguenots appear to prevail ; and again did the 
matchless cunning of the queen-mother triumph over 
the unstable leader, and he signed the peace of Long- 
jumeau, " which," says Mezeray, " left his party at the 
mercy of their enemies, with no other security than 
the word of an Italian woman." The treaty never 
existed, save on paper ; the foreign mercenaries were 
still retained in the kingdom; the pulpits resounded 
with the doctrine that no faith should be kept with 
heretics; the streets of the cities were strewed with 
the corpses of the Huguenots, ten thousand of whom, 
in three months of treaty, were barbarously slain. The 
officer of the Prince de Conde, while carrying the terms 
of peace, was arrested and beheaded, in defiance of the 
king's safe-conduct ; and the prince and the admiral, 
fleeing from an enemy whom no ties could restrain, 
nor oaths could bind, flung themselves into the city of 
Rochelle. Thither came the heroic Queen of Navarre 
with an army of four thousand men ; thither flocked 
also the most renowned captains of the party ; so that, 
at the commencement of the third war of religion, the 
Huguenots had at command a more considerable force 
than ever, and Coligny repeated the aphorism of The- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 33 

mistocles — "My friends, we should have perished, if 
we had not been ruined." On the bloody fields of Jarnac 
and Montcontour, where the Duke of Anjou, after- 
wards Henry III., won his first spurs of fame, their 
ruin seemed to be complete ; for their army was well- 
nigh exterminated, and of their leaders, the Prince of 
Conde and D'Andelot, the brother of Coligny, were 
slain ; and the admiral himself was carried, weary and 
wounded, from the field. But nothing could daunt 
the spirit of this brave soldier, and while the victors 
were quaffing their nectar of triumph, and carousing 
in the flush of victory, he appeared before the gates of 
Paris at the head of a still stronger and better discip- 
lined army. Again peace was concluded, and the Ke- 
f ormed in appearance obtained more favourable terms. 
The leaders came to Paris, and were received with fair 
show of amity by the king and court ; but it was only 
a brief interval of repose, soon to be succeeded by dis- 
may and confusion, for even then the dark Italian and 
the fanatic Spaniard were brooding over the fierce 
tragedy to follow. 

For the honour of humanity, let us pass rapidly over 
the massacre of St Bartholomew — that premeditated 
and most infamous atrocity. On the 24th August 
1572, at the noon of night, fit time for deeds of blood, 
the queen-mother and her two guilty sons were shiver- 
ing in all the timidness of cruelty in the royal chamber. 
They maintained a sullen silence, for conscience had 

c 



34 THE HUGUENOTS. 

made cowards of them all. As they looked out uneasily 
into the oppressed and solitary night, a pistol shot was 
heard. Eemorse seized upon the irresolute monarch, 
and he issued orders to arrest the tragedy. It was 
too late, for the royal tigress at his side, anticipating 
that his purpose might waver, had already commanded 
the signal, and even as they spoke the bell of St Ger- 
main aux Auxerrois tolled, heavy and dooming, through 
the darkness. Forth issued the courtly butchers to 
their work of blood. At the onset the brave old 
admiral was massacred, the Huguenots in the Louvre 
w r ere despatched by halberdiers, with the court ladies 
looking on. Armed men, shouting " For God and the 
king/' traversed the streets, and forced the dwellings 
of the heretics. Sixty thousand assassins, wielding all 
the weapons of the brigand and the soldier, ran about 
on all sides, murdering, without distinction of sex or 
age, or suffering, all of the ill-fated creed ; the air was 
laden with a tumult of sounds, in which the roar of 
arquebus and the crash of hatchet mingled with blas- 
pheming taunt and dying groan. 

" For hideously, mid rape and sack, 
The murderer's laughter answered back 
His prey's convulsive laughter." 

The populace, already inflamed by the sight of blood, 
followed in the track of slaughter, mutilating the 
corpses, and dragging them through the kennels in 
derision. The leaders, the Dukes of Guise, Nevers, 



THE HUGUENOTS. 35 

and Montpensier, riding fiercely from street to street, 
like the demons of the storm, roused the passion into 
frenzy by their cries — " Kill, kill ! Blood-letting is good 
in August, By the king's command. Death to the 
Huguenot! Kill!" On sped the murder, until city 
and palace were gorged. Men forgot their manhood, 
and women their tenderness. In worse than Circaean 
transformation, the human was turned into the brutal, 
and there prowled about the streets a race of ghouls and 
vampires, consumed with an appetite for blood. The 
roads were almost impassable from the corpses of men, 
women, and children — a new and appalling barricade ; 
" The earth was covered thick with other clay, which 
her own clay did cover.'*' Paris became one vast Red 
Sea, whose blood-waves had no refluent tide. The sun 
of that blessed Sabbath shone with its clear kind light 
upon thousands of dishonoured and desolate homes ; 
and the air, which should have been hushed from sound 
until the psalm of devotion woke it, carried upon 
its startled billows the yells of fierce blasphemers, 
flushed and drunk with murder, and the shrieks of 
parting spirits, like a host of unburied witnesses, cry- 
ing from beneath the altar unto God, " How long, 
Lord, how long !" 

The massacre was renewed in the provinces ; for 
seven long days Paris was a scene of pillage ; fifteen 
thousand in the capital, and one hundred thousand 
throughout the whole of France, are supposed to have 



36 THE HUGUENOTS. 

perished, many by the edge of the sword, and many 
more by the protracted perils of flight and of famine. 

Consider all the circumstances of St Bartholomew's 
massacre ; — the confederacy which plotted it in secret ; 
the complicity of the king and court ; — the snares laid 
for the feet of the Huguenots ; the solemn oaths of 
safety under whose attestation they were allured to 
Paris ; the kisses by which, like the Eedeemer whom 
they honoured, they were betrayed to ruin ; "the funeral 
meats which coldly furnished forth the marriage tables ;" 
the dagger of wholesale murder, whetted upon the 
broken tables of the Decalogue, and put by priests and 
nobles into the hands of a maddened crowd ; the long 
continuance of the carnage — the original as it was of 
the Reign of Terror ; and, lastly, the uplifting of red 
hands in thanksgiving, the ringing of joy- bells at 
Madrid and Rome, and the baptism of all this horrible 
butchery by the insulted name of religion ; — and we 
cannot avoid the conclusion that nothing in the annals 
of human history involves such flagrant violations both 
of earthly and heavenly law — that there is a combina- 
tion of atrocious elements about it for which we look 
elsewhere in vain, and that it stands in unapproachable 
turpitude, the crime without a shadow and without a 
parallel. 

We dwell upon the wars of religion and the tragedy 
of St Bartholomew, not to keep alive olden animosities, 
but to induce our thankfulness that w^e live in kindlier 



THE HUGUENOTS. 37 

times ; to inspire a more reverent appreciation of the 
priceless heritage of religious freedom ; and not least, 
to impress uj)on our hearts the truth that banded armies 
and battle's stern array are no meet missionaries of 
" the truth as it is in Jesus/' Oh, never, we may boldly 
say it, never did the cruelties of war, nor the tortures 
of tyranny, advance one iota the cause of our holy reli- 
gion. The Crusader's lance reclaimed no Saracen from 
his error. The scimitar of the Moslem might establish 
a military domination, but the fear of it wrought no 
spiritual change. Covenanters still gathered in the dark 
ravine, and raised the perilous psalm, though the sleuth- 
hound tracked them through the wild wood, and some 
whom the soldiers of Claverhouse had slaughtered were 
missing from each successive assembly. With the tor- 
ture and the stake in prospect, the coward lip might 
falter, and the recreant hand might sign the recantation, 
but the heart would be Protestant still. Christianity 
is a spiritual kingdom, and no carnal weapons glitter in 
her armoury. To her zealous but mistaken friends 
who would do battle for her, she addresses the rebuke 
of her Master, " Put up thy sword into its sheath again, 
for they that take the sword shall perish with the 
sword." A beautiful and healing presence ! she comes 
to soothe, not to irritate — to unite, not to estrange ; and, 
spurning adventitious aids, and disdaining to use com- 
mon methods of aggrandisement, she relies for triumph 
upon her own kingly truth, and upon that Divine 



38 THE HUGUENOTS. 

Spirit who has promised to give it power. Oh, be- 
lieve me, Christianity forges no fetters for conscience ; 
she rejoices not, but shudders at the stream of blood ! 
While, on the one hand, it were insult to the sincerity 
of faith to proffer boon in requital for devotion ; on the 
other, it were foul felony of the crown-rights of man to 
rob even a beggar of a single motive for his worship, 
and that were an unworthy espousal, which would wed 
the destiny of heaven to the intrigues of earth, and 
"hang the tatters of a political piety upon the cross of 
an insulted Saviour/'' 

Alas! that in our fallen nature, there should be 
such a strange disposition to make persecution coeval 
with power. Calvin raised no voice in the Genevan 
Council against the sentence which adjudged Servetus 
to the stake. The fanatic Roundhead, in his day of 
power, searching the baronial hall for hidden cope and 
missal, was, to the full, as brutal and unlovely, and 
because he had clearer light, more criminal than was 
the roystering cavalier. The Pilgrim Fathers, men 
honoured for conscience' sake now as much as they 
were despised a century ago, were not long established 
in their Goshen home, when, remindless of their own 
sharp discipline, they drove out the Quakers into the 
Egypt of the wilderness beyond. The fact is, that 
persecution generates persecution, the lash and the 
fetters debase as well as agonise the races of the 
captive and the slave. Hence, wars have been waged, 



THE HUGUENOTS. 39 

cities sacked, property pillaged, lives massacred, all in 
the judgment of the perpetrators of the crimes "for 
the glory of God." Hence, history presents us with 
so many lustrations of blood offered at the shrine of 
some pagan Nemesis in the sacred name of liberty. 
Hence, also, there is yet among the marvellous incon- 
sistencies of the world, a nation with the cry of 
freedom ever on its lips, defiant of all others in its 
rude and quarrelsome independence, and at its feet, with 
heart all wildly beating, and eye all dim with tears, 
there crouches an imploring sufferer, type of thousands 
like him, whose only crime is colour, who dare not lift 
himself up openly and in the face of the sun, and say, 
" I myself also am a man." 

While, however, we admit this tendency, and watch 
over its beginnings in ourselves — while we confess that 
in the sad wars of religion there were Michelades as 
well as Dragonades, Huguenot reprisals as well as 
Eomanist massacres, we ought not to omit to notice one 
essential difference which should be ever kept in mind : 
when Protestants persecute, they persecute of their own 
"malice aforethought," and in direct opposition to the 
rescripts of their holy religion — in the other system, 
persecution is no exotic growth, but springs indigenous 
and luxuriant from the system itself. Persecution, in 
the one case, is by Protestants, not of Protestantism ; 
in the other case, it is not so much by Kornanists, as 
of Popery. I rejoice to believe that there are multi- 



40 THE HUGUENOTS. 

tildes of high-hearted and kindly Eoman Catholics 
who are men, patriots, aye, and Christians too, in spite 
of their teachings in error. And I am proud of my 
country and of my humanity, when, in the breach and 
in the battle, on the summit of Barossa or in the 
trenches at Sebastopol, I see nationality triumph over 
ultramontanism, and the inspiration of patriotism 
extinguish the narrowness of creed. But if the spirit 
of persecution be not in the heart of the Catholic, it is 
in the book of Popery, in the decretal, in the decision 
of the council, in the fulmination of the Pope. The 
Church of Rome can only save her charity at the ex- 
pense of her consistency. Let her erase the " Semper 
eadem " which flaunts upon her banner. There is an 
antiquated claim of infallibility too put forward on her 
behalf sometimes, which she had better leave behind 
her altogether. But she cannot change. When she 
erases penal statutes from her registers, and coercion and 
treachery from her creed — when we see her tolerant in 
the countries where she lords it in ascendancy, as she 
would fain have us think her in our own, where, 
thank God, she yet only struggles for the mastery — 
when she no longer contemplates haughty and insolent 
aggression — when lady tract-distributors are no longer 
incarcerated, and when Madiais are free — when papal 
protection comes not in the form of grape-shot over 
Tahitian women — when metallic arguments are no 
longer threatened from French corvettes against King 



THE HUGUENOTS. 41 

George of Tonga — when all these marvels come to pass 
(and when they do, there J s hope of the millennium), 
— then, possibly, we may listen more willingly to the 
advances of Popery ; but until then, it is the duty of 
us all — while careful to preserve our own charity, 
wanting neither gags, nor gibbets, nor penalties, nor 
prisons, discarding all the questionable modes in 
which the earth has sometimes helped the woman, 
allowing the fullest liberty to hold and to diffuse 
opinion, robbing of no civil right, and asking for no 
j>enal bond — to take our stand, as did our brave and 
pious fathers, by the precious altars of our faith, and 
to cry in the homesteads of our youth, and in the 
temples of our God, " All kindness to our Romanist 
fellow-subjects, but a barred door to Popery, and 

NO PEACE WLTB. ROME." 

Horrible as was the massacre of St Bartholomew, the 
subsequent celebrations of it were yet more revolting. 
Rome and Madrid were intoxicated with joy. Pope 
Gregory and his cardinals went to church, amid the 
jubilee of citizens, and the booming of cannon, to ren- 
der God thanksgiving for the destruction of the Church's, 
enemies. A medal was struck to commemorate the 
event to the faithful, and a picture of the massacre 
embellished the walls of the Vatican. Protestant 
Europe was struck with astonishment and horror. 
Germany began to hold the name of Frenchmen in ab- 
horrence. Geneva appointed a day of fasting and 



42 THE HUGUENOTS. 

prayer, which continues to this day. Knox, in the 
Scottish pulpit, denounced vengeance for the deed, with 
all the boldness of the Hebrew Prophet ; and when the 
Trench ambassador made his appearance at the court 
of Queen Elizabeth, she allowed him to pass without a 
word of recognition through files of courtiers and ladies 
clad in the deepest mourning. 

Shortly after these events, Charles IX. miserably 
died, consumed with agonies of remorse, and whether 
from corrosive sublimate, or from some new and strange 
malady, with blood oozing out of every pore of his 
body. Henry III., his brother and successor, was a 
strange medley of valour and effeminacy, of superstition 
and licentiousness. His youth of daring was followed 
by a voluptuous and feeble manhood. He was crafty, 
cowardly, and cruel. One of the chief actors in St 
Bartholomew's tragedy, he afterwards caused the 
asassination of his confrere the Duke of Guise, who was 
poniarded in the royal presence-chamber. When re- 
volt was ripe in his provinces, and treason imperilled 
his throne, he would break off a council assembled on 
gravest matters, that he might sigh over the shipwreck 
of a cargo of parrots, or deplore in secret the illness of 
some favourite ape. The leaguers hated him, and 
preached openly regicide and rebellion. The Huguenots 
distrusted him, and Henry of Navarre routed his 
armies on the field of Coutras. Gifted with high 
talents, and of kingly presence, he shrank into the 



THE HUGUENOTS. 43 

shadow of a man — a thing of pomatums and essences — 
the object of his people's hate and scorn. His reign 
was a continual succession of intrigue and conspiracy 
between all the parties in the realm ; and in 1589, he fell 
by the knife of Jacques Clement, who was canonised 
by the Pope for the murder ; and the Vicar of Christ, 
seated in full consistory at Kome, dared the blasphem- 
ous avowal, that the devotion of this assassin formed no 
unworthy comparison with the sacrifice of the blessed 
Eedeemer. In Henry III. terminated the " bloody and 
deceitful " race of Valois, " who did not live out half 
their days/' Francis I. died unregretted ; Henry II. 
was killed by the lance of Montgomery ; Francis II. 
never came of age ; Charles IX. expired in fearful 
torments ; Henry III. was murdered by a Dominican 
friar ; The Duke d' Alen5on fell a victim to intemper- 
ance ; Francis and Henry, successive Dukes of Guise, 
fell beneath the daggers of assassins. The heads of 
the persecutors came not to the grave in peace. It is 
not without an intelligible and solemn j)urpose, that 
retribution should thus have dogged the heels of 
tyranny. Oh, strange and subtle affinity between 
crime and punishment ! Lacratelle, in his " History of 
the Wars of Religion," has accumulated the proofs that 
nearly all the actors in the massacre of St Bartholomew 
suffered early and violent deaths. In the earlier perse- 
cutions of the Reformed, the clergy instigated the cut- 
ting out of the tongues of the victims, to stifle their 



44 THE HUGUENOTS. 

utterances of dying heroism. See the sad example 
followed by the frantic populace against the clergy, 
two hundred and fifty years afterwards, in the reign of 
terror ! In the time of the Cardinal of Lorraine, the 
Loire was choked with common victims ; in the time 
of Carrier of Nantes, it ran with noble blood ! Henry, 
Duke of Guise, kicked the corpse of Coligny on the day 
of St Bartholomew, with the exclamation, "Thou shalt 
spit no more venom." Sixteen years passed over, and 
the monarch of France, spurning the slain body of this 
very Duke of Guise, exclaimed, " Now at length I am a 
king." Charles IX., in the frenzy of cowardice, or in 
the contagion of slaughter, pointed an arquebus at the 
flying Huguenots ; two hundred years after, Mirabeau 
brought from the dust of ages that same arquebus, and 
pointed it at the throne of Louis XVI. Beza spoke 
truly when he said, " The Church is an anvil upon 
which many a hammer has been broken." "Verily 
there is a God that judgeth in the earth/' and though 
"the heathen have raged, and the kings of the earth 
taken counsel together against the Lord, and against 
His anointed," drifted corpses on the Eed Sea shore, 
Babylon's monarch slain in his own palace, scattered 
vessels of a proud Armada, wise men taken in their 
own craftiness, the downfall of a fierce oppressor, the 
crash of a desolated throne, tiny things working de- 
liverance, the perfection of praise ordained from the 
lips of babes, — all these have proved that " He that sit- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 45 

teth in the heavens doth laugh, the Lord doth have 
them in derision." The bush in the wilderness has 
been often set on fire, flames have been kindled on it 
by countless torches, flaring in incendiary hands ; but 
the torches have gone out in darkness, the incendiaries 
have perished miserably, and 

" The bush itself has mounted higher, 
And flourished, unconsumed, in fire. 



Henry of Navarre succeeded to the throne, but found 
himself in the peculiar position of a king who had to 
conquer his kingdom. The leaguers refused allegiance, 
and set up as king the old cardinal of Bourbon, under 
the name of Charles X. The Duke of Mayenne had 
convened the states-general in Paris, and was ready to 
be the Catholic champion, and many of the nobles 
attached to the party of the court, refused to march 
under a Huguenot leader. The Protestant captains 
remained faithful and were less exacting. The chief 
of them, the Duke de Bouillon, de Chatillon, the son 
of Coligny, Agrippa d'Aubigne, Lanoue, the illustrious 
Duplessis Mornay, and the still more illustrious Baron 
de Bosny, afterwards Duke of Sully, rallied round him 
and inspirited his small army of seven thousand men. 
At the head of this army, scanty in numbers, but sturdy 
in valour, and having the new obligation of loyalty 
added to the old obligation of religion, Henry joined 
battle with his adversaries and triumphed both at 
Arques, and on the memorable field of Ivry. A few 



THE HUGUENOTS. 47 

days before the latter battle, Schomberg, general of the 
German auxiliaries, demanded the arrears of payment 
for his soldiers. The finances fell short, and the 
matter was reported to the king. In the first moment 
of impatience, he said, " They are no true men who 
ask for money on the eve of a battle." Repenting of 
his ill-timed vivacity, he hastened before he went into 
action to offer reparation. " General," said he, in the 
presence and hearing of his troops, * I have offended 
you ; this battle will perhaps be the last of my life. I 
know your merit and your valour, I pray you pardon 
and embrace me." Schomberg replied, "It is true, 
Sire, that your Majesty wounded me the^ other day ; 
but to-day you have killed me ; for I shall feel proud 
to die on this occasion in your service." In the hour 
of danger Henry called to mind the instructions of his 
pious mother. Raising his eyes to heaven; he invoked 
God to witness the justice of his cause. " But, Lord," 
said he, " if it has pleased thee to ordain otherwise, or 
if thou seest that I shall be one of those kings whom 
thou givest in thine anger, take from me my life and 
crown together, and may my blood be the last that 
shall be shed in this quarrel." Then riding through 
the ranks cheerful as a lover speeding to his bridal, he 
thus addressed his soldiers, " You are Frenchmen, I 
am your King, and yonder is the enemy." Pointing 
to a white plume which he had fastened in his helmet, 
" My children/' he said, " look well to your ranks. If 



48 THE HUGUENOTS. 

the standards fall, rally round my white plume, it will 
shew you the short road to glory." Animated by 
strains like these, the soldiers fought like heroes, the 
leaguers were utterly routed, and the French historians 
say that this single field of Ivry has covered Henry of 
Navarre with a wreath of immortal fame. It has in- 
deed immortalised him, though in a manner on which 
they would hardly calculate, for it has throned his 
memory in the clarion stanzas of Macaulay's undying 
song : — 

4i Oh, how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day 
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array ; 
"With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, 
And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears : 
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land, 
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand. 
And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, 
And good Coligny's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood ; 
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, 
To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre. 

The King has come to marshal us, all in his armour drest, 
And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest ; 
He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye, 
He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high : 
Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, 
Down all our line a deafening shout, ' God save our Lord the King.' 
An' if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, 
For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray ; 
Press where ye see my white plume shine amid the ranks of war, 
And be your oriflamme to-day the helmit of Navarre. 
******* 

A thousand spears are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, 

A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest ; 



THE HUGUENOTS. 49 

And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, 
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre : 
Now, God be praised, the day is ours. Mayenne hath turn'd his rein, 
D'Aumale hath cried for quarter. The Flemish count is slain. 
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale. 
The field is heap'd with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail. 
******* 

But we of the religion have borne us best in fight, 

And the good Lord of Rosny hath ta'en the cornet white; 

Our own true Maximilian the cornet white hath ta'en, 

The cornet white with crosses black, the flag of false Lorraine. 

Up with it high : unfurl it wide ; that all the host may know 

How God hath humbled the proud house which wrought His Church 

such woe ; 
Then on the ground while trumpets sound their loudest point of war, 
Fling the red shreds — a foot-cloth meet for Henry of Navarre. 

" Ho ! maidens of Vienna ; Ho ! matrons of Lucerne ; 

Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return. 

Ho ! Philip send, for charity, thy Mexican pistoles, 

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls- 

Ho ! gallant nobles of the League, look that your arms be bright ,- 

Ho ! burghers of Saint Genevieve, keep watch and ward to-night •- 

For our God hath crush' d the tyrant, our God hath raised the brave, 

And mocked the counsel of the wise and valour of the brave. 

Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are, 

And glory to our sovereign lord, King Henry of Navarre ! " 

After this spirit-stirring eulogy, it may seem rather 
an anti-climax to question whether the cause of the 
Huguenots has, in the long run, been furthered or 
damaged by the patronage of Henry of Navarre. In- 
deed, it was in many respects a grievous misfortune to 
the interests of Protestantism in France that it was 
allied for so many years to the fortunes of the house of 
Bourbon. It was deserted and betrayed by them all. 

D 



50 THE HUGUENOTS. 

Anthony of Navarre forsook it in hope of a sovereignty ; 
his brother, Louis of Conde, for the chance of becom- 
ing lieutenant-general ; the younger Conde, to save his 
life on St Bartholomew ; Henry IV., not content with 
one apostasy, was recreant twice, first for the preserva- 
tion of his life, and then for the preservation of his 
crown ; and the three following Bourbons " persecuted 
this way unto the death." Surely, if they of the Ee- 
formed had been docile scholars, apt to learn the lessons 
of experience and wisdom, they would have profited 
earlier by the admonition, "Put not your trust in 
princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no 
help." The abjuration of Protestantism by Henry IV. 
has found some earnest and zealous defenders. It 
is said, that by adhering to the Eeformed Church, 
he would have prolonged war, dismembered France, 
been a king without a crown and without a king- 
dom, abdicated in favour of the Guise, and delivered 
up the defenceless Huguenots to the blind fury of the 
Leaguers and their party. On the other hand, by re- 
turning to the Eomish communion, he would have 
restored peace, secured toleration, established an empire, 
and transmitted a dynasty. With what reason, say 
they, in the prospect of such consequences, could he 
persist in the maintenance of a creed, to which he had 
only given, at any time, a traditional and thoughtless 
adhesion ? Such apologists are worse than any accusers. 
Henry of Navarre, with all his faults, was a truer man 



THE HUGUENOTS. 51 

than these defenders make him. He was no hypocrite 
when he led his gallant troops at Coutras and at 
Ivry ; and to suppose that for long years he conducted 
one of the deadliest civil wars which France has ever 
known without one honest enthusiasm or a solitary re- 
ligious inspiration, is to fasten upon him the brand of 
a colossal blood-guiltiness for which history would 
scarcely find a parallel. Some ascribe his apostasy to 
a humane and politic foresight ; others, quite as plau- 
sibly, to the absence of commanding principle, the 
power of seductive influences, and a weakness for sen- 
sual pleasure. But whether prompted by godless ex- 
pediency, or by fatal flexibility to the influences of evil, 
it was a great sin. It deserves sharp and stern repro- 
bation. Taking the best view of it, it exalted human 
sagacity above God's great laws of truth and right, 
which cannot be violated with impunity. Taking the 
worst view of it, it was an impious blasphemy against 
all sacred things, — in the strong, but just words of a 
modern French historian, "a lie from beginning to 
end/ ; But honesty is the best policy, as well as the 
noblest practice ; and it may be questioned fairly 
whether the abjuration was not, a la Talleyrand, 
<l worse than a crime — a blunder ; " whether the political 
results of it were not fraught as much with mischief 
as with blessing. It conciliated the Catholics, but by 
presenting religion as a profession which might be 
changed like a garment, it tended to sap the founda- 



52 THE HUGUENOTS. 

tions of all piety, and prepared the way for those god- 
less philosophising ideas which cursed the France of 
the future with a blaspheming and destructive infidelity. 
It gave the Huguenots a comparative and mistrusted 
toleration, but it robbed them of their severer virtues, 
and imperilled their consistency by the contagion of its 
scandalous example. It secured to himself a reign of 
seventeen years, but they were years of vice and terror, 
abruptly terminated by the assassin's dagger. It 
rescued France from the rivalry of a disputed succes- 
sion, but it entailed upon her two centuries of misrule 
and despotism. It transmitted the crown to seven of 
his posterity in succession ; but one was a monkish 
hypochondriac, one has left an infamous and execrated 
name, three were deposed by their tumultuous subjects, 
and one perished on the scaffold. Louis XIV. seems 
to be the only exception to the fatality which, like a 
weird-spirit of disaster, waited upon the house of 
Bourbon, and even he — a despot and a debauchee, a 
prodigal and a persecutor — entailed ruin, if he did not 
suffer it, upon his name and race. So true are the 
maxims of the Holy Book — " A lying tongue is but for 
a moment, but the lip of truth shall be established for 
ever/' " The righteous shall be in everlasting remem- 
brance, but the memory of the wicked shall rot." 

We have said that there was in the character of 
Henry of Navarre a fatal flexibility to evil influences, 
and we are inclined to think that if we regard him as 






THE HUGUENOTS. 53 

too indolent to rebel against the pressure of present 
advisers, constant only in fickleness, we shall explain 
many of the seeming inconsistencies of his conduct 
and of his reign. He seems to have had mingled with 
"the braveiy and intellect which he undoubtedly pos- 
sessed, a marvellous ductility which yielded to well- 
nigh every touch of interest or passion. He never 
seems to have said "No," to any one. "My son," said 
Jeanne d'Albret, " swear fealty to the cause of the 
Befornied." The oath was taken. "My brother/' 
said Charles IX., " don't bury yourself in the country, 
come to court." Henry came. " Don't you think you 
had better marry Marguerite of Valois?" No objec- 
tions. "The mass or the massacre," thundered out 
the assassins on the day of St Bartholomew. " Oh 
the mass, by all means." " Follow after pleasure," 
^whispered Catharine de Medicis ; " kings and princes 
are absolved from too strict adhesion to the marriage 
vow." Henry too readily obeyed. " Let us form an 
alliance," said Henry of Valois, although he had told 
the States at Blois that they were not to believe him, 
even if he promised with most sacred oaths that he 
Tvould spare the heretics. " With all my heart," was 
the reply of Navarre. " Become Catholic," shouted the 
nobles of the court, "and we will swear allegiance." 
" Wait a bit," was the answer of the king. " Abjure," 
was the soft whisper of the all-powerful Gabrielle 
d'Estrees ; " the pope can annul your marriage, and 



54 THE HUGUENOTS. 

then ours shall be love and gladness/' Henry abjured. 
* Sire, we look to you for protection/' respectfully said 
the Reformed. " Oh, of course ; only if I should seem 
to favour the Catholics, remember the fatted calf was 
killed for the prodigal, and you are the elder son/' 
" Sire, don't you think it rather hard upon the Jesuits 
that they should be banished from France ? May they 
not come back again?" Oh, certainly, if they wish 
it;" and they came — and among them Eavaillac the 
assassin. Throughout the whole of his life there is 
scarcely a recorded instance of his maintenance of an 
individual opinion, or of his assertion of a commanding 
will. Oh, these men who cannot say "No;" what 
mischief they have wrought in this world! Their his- 
tory would be a sad one if we could only trace it. 
Advantages thrown away, opportunities of golden pro- 
mise slipping by unheeded, fortune squandered, friends 
neglected ; one man drawn into difficult controversy, 
another involved in ruinous speculation, a third wal- 
lowing in the mire of intemperance, a fourth dragged 
into the foul hell of a gaming-house. Gambling, 
drunkenness, felony, beggary, ruin both to body and 
soul, all because men could not say " No." A lively 
essayist of modern times has humorously depicted some 
of the evils which rise out of this inability to utter 
negatives : — 

" Is he a rational being who has not an opinion of 
his own ? — No ! Is he in possession of his five senses 



THE HUGUENOTS. 55 

who sees with the eyes, who hears with the ears of 
of other men? — No ! Does he act upon principle who 
sacrifices truth, honour, and independence on the shrine 
of servility ? — Again and again we reply, No ! no ! no ! 

" There 's Sir Philip Plausible, the Parliament man. 
He can make a speech of nine hours, and a calculation 
of nine pages. Nobody is a better hand at getting up 
a majority, or palavering a refractory oppositionist. 
He proffers an argument and a bribe with equal dex- 
terity, and converts by place and pension when he is 
unable to convince by alliteration and antithesis. What 
a pity it is he can't say ' No/ ' Sir Philip/ says an 
envoy, ' you'll remember my little business at the Fo- 
reign Office V ( Depend upon my friendship/ says the 
minister.' ' Sir Philip,' says a fat citizen, with two 
votes and two dozen children, ' you'll remember Billy's 
place in the Customs?' 'Rely on my promise!' says 
the minister. ' Sir Philip ! ' says a lady of rank, ' En- 
sign Roebuck is an officer most deserving promotion V 
1 He shall be a colonel ! ' says the minister. Mark the 
result ! He has outraged his friendship ; he has for- 
gotten his promise ; he has falsified his oath. Had he 
ever an idea of performing what he spoke ? Quite the 
reverse ! How unlucky that he cannot say i No !' 

" Look at Bob Lily ! There lives no finer poet ! 
Epic, elegiac, satiric, Pindaric, it is all one to him ! He 
is patronised by all the first people in town. Every- 
body compliments him, everybody asks him to dinner. 



56 THE HUGUENOTS. 

Nay ! there are some who read him. He excels alike 
in tragedy and farce, and is without a rival in amphi- 
bious dramas, which may be called either the one or 
the other ; but he is a sad bungler in negatives. ' Mr 
Lily/ says the duchess, his patroness, e you will be sure 
to bring that dear epithalamium to my conversazione 
this evening/ ' There is no denying your grace/ says 
the poet. ' I say, Lily/ says the duke, his patron, ' you 
will dine with us at seven?' 'Your grace does me 
honour/ says the poet. ■ Bob ! ' says the young mar- 
quis, ' you are for Brookes's to-night V ' To be sure !' 
says the poet. Mark the result ! He is gone to eat 
tripe with his tyrannical bookseller ; he has disap- 
pointed his patroness ; he has offended his patron ; he 
has cut the club ! How unlucky he cannot say ' No ! ' 

" Ned Shuttle was a dashing young fellow who, to 
use his own expression, was ' above denying a thing/ 
In plainer terms, he could not say ' No/ ' Sir V says 
an enraged Tory, ' you are the author of this pamphlet ! ' 
Ned never saw the work, but he was above ' denying a 
thing/ and was horsewhipped for a libeller. ' Sir ! ' 
says an unfortunate pigeon, ' you had the king in your 
sleeve last night!' Ned never saw the pigeon before, 
but he was 'above denying a thing/ and was cut for a 
blackleg. 'Sir!' says a hot Hibernian, 'you insulted 
my sister in the Park ! ' Ned never saw the lady or 
her champion before, but he was 'above denying a 
thing/ and was shot through the head the next morn- 



THE HUGUENOTS. 57 

ing. Poor fellow ! How unlucky that he could not 
say' No !'"* 

Believe me, he who can say " No," when to say it is 
to speak to his own hurt, has achieved a conquest 
greater far than he that taketh a city. Let me exhort 
you to cultivate this talent for yourselves. You need 
not mistake sauciness for strength, and be rude, and 
brusque, and self-opinionated in your independence. 
That extreme were as uncomely as the other. But let 
it be ours to be self-reliant amid. hosts of the vacillat- 
ing — real in a generation of triflers — true amongst a 
multitude of shams — when tempted to swerve from 
principle, sturdy as an oak in its maintenance ; when 
solicited by the enticements of sinners, firm as a rock 
in our denial. I trust that yours may never be the cha- 
racter which, that you may be the more impressed by 
it, I give you in the poet's pleasant verse : — 

" ' He had faults, perhaps had many, 

But one fault above them all 
Lay like heavy lead upon him, 

Tyrant of a patient thrall. 
Tyrant seen, conf ess'd, and hated, 

Banish' d only to recall.' 

" ' Oh ! he drank V { His drink was water ! ' 
1 Gambled?' 'No! he hated play. ' 

' Then, perchance, a tenderer feeling 
Led his heart and head astray ? ' 

' No ! both honour and religion 
Kept him in the purer way.' 

* Winthrop Mackworth Praed. 



58 THE HUGUENOTS. 

" ' Then he scorned life's mathematics, 

Could not reckon up a score, 
Pay his debts, or be persuaded 

Two and two were always four ? ' 
' No ! he was exact as Euclid, 

Prompt and punctual — no one more.' 

" ' Oh ! a miser ? ' ' No.' ' Too lavish ? ' 

' Worst of guessers, guess again/ 
' No ! I'm weary hunting failures. 

Was he seen of mortal ken, 
Paragon of marble virtues, 

Quite a model man of men ? ' 

" { At his birth an evil spirit 

Charms and spells around him flung, 

And with well concocted malice, 
Laid a curse upon his tongue ; 

Curse that daily made him wretched — 
Earth's most wretched sons among. 

" * He could plead, expound, and argue, 

Fire with wit, with wisdom glow ; 
But one word for ever fail'd him, 

Source of all his pain and woe : 
Luckless man ! he could not say it, 

Could not, dare not, answer — No ! ' " 

The sole result of advantage, immediately flowing 
from the king's apostasy, was the power which it gave 
him to promulgate the celebrated Edict of Nantes, 
the great charter of the French Eeformation. In the 
preamble it was acknowledged that God was adored by 
all the French people, with unity of intention, though 
in variety of form ; and it was then declared to be a 
perpetual and irrevocable law — the main foundation of 
union and tranquillity in the state. The concessions 



THE HUGUENOTS. 59 

granted by it were, — 1. Full liberty of conscience (in 
private) to all ; 2. The public celebration of worship in 
places where it was established at the time of the pass- 
ing of the edict, and in the suburbs of cities ; 3. That 
superior lords might hold assemblies within the pre- 
cincts of their chateaux, and that gentlemen of lower 
degree might admit visitors to the number of thirty 
to their domestic worship ; 4. That Protestantism 
should be no bar to offices of public trust, nor to 
participation in the benefactions of charity ; 5. That 
they should have chartered academies for the educa- 
tion of their youth ; 6. That they might convene and 
hold national synods ; and 7. That they should be 
allowed a certain number of cautionary towns, fortified 
and garrisoned to secure against infractions of the 
covenant. This edict, though as it appears to us, 
recognising an imperium in imperio, and as such 
giving freedom but in grudging measure, was for 
eighty-seven years the rule of right, if not the bul- 
wark of defence for the Protestants of Prance. Those 
years, after all, were years of distrust and suspicion, of 
encroachment on the one hand, and of resistance on 
the other. The fall of Rochelle, and the edict of 
pardon in 1629, definitively terminated the religious 
wars of Prance, and the Protestants, excluded from 
court employment, and from civil service, lost their 
temptations to luxury and idleness, and became the 
industrial sinews of the state. They farmed the fine 



60 THE HUGUENOTS. 

land of the Cevennes ; and the vineyards of Berri. The 
wine-trade of Guienne, the cloths of Caen ; the mari- 
time trade on the seabord of Normandy, the manu- 
factures in the north-western provinces, the silks and 
taffetas of Lyons ; and many others which time would 
fail us to mention, were almost entirely in their hands ; 
and by the testimony of their enemies, they combined 
the highest citizenship with the highest piety ; in- 
dustry, frugality, integrity — all the commercial virtues 
hallowed by unbending conscientiousness, earnest love 
of religion, and a continual fear of God. 

The Edict of Nantes was revoked on 2 2d October 
1685. The principal causes which led to this suicidal 
stroke of policy, were the purchased conversions and 
the Dragonades. Louis XIV. had a secret fund which 
he devoted to the conversion of his Protestant subjects. 
The average price for a convert was about six livres 
per head, and the abjuration and the receipt, twin 
vouchers for the money, were submitted to the king to- 
gether. The management of this fund was entrusted 
to Pelisson, originally a Huguenot, but who became a 
convert to amend his fortunes, and a converter to en- 
rich them. The establishment was conducted upon 
strictly commercial principles. It had its branches, 
correspondents, letters of credit, lists of prices current, 
and so forth, like any other mercantile concern. There 
is extant a curious letter, perhaps we should say circular, 
of Pelisson's, which shews that, amid all his zeal, he had 



THE HUGUENOTS. 61 

a keen eye for business, and was not disposed to be 
imprudent in bis speculations witb tbe consciences of 
others. " Although/' he says, " you may go as far as a 
hundred francs, it is not meant that you are always to 
go to that extent, as it is necessary to use the utmost 
possible economy ; in the first place, to shed this dew 
(0 blessed baptismal dew !) upon as many as possible, 
and besides, if we give a hundred francs to people of no 
consequence, without any family to follow them, those 
who are a little above them, or who bring a number of 
children after them, will demand far larger sums." 
Pelisson's success was so great, that Louvois was stimu- 
lated with the like holy ambition, only his converting 
agency was not a charge of money, but a charge of 
dragoons. Troops were quartered upon Huguenot 
families, and the soldiers were allowed every possible 
licence of brutality, short only of rape and murder. 
All kinds of threat and indignity were practised to 
induce the Protestants to abjure ; the ingenuity of the 
soldiers was taxed to devise tortures that were agonis- 
ing, without being mortal. Whole provinces were 
reported as being converted. One of the agents in the 
Cevennes wrote to the Chancellor thus : — " The number 
of Protestants in this province is 240,000. I asked 
until the 25th of next month for their entire conversion, 
but I fixed too distant a date, for I believe that at the 
end of this month all will be done." No day passed 
without bringing to the king the news of thousands of 



62 THE HUGUENOTS. 

conversions ; the court affected to believe that Pro- 
testantism in France was at an end, and the king, 
willingly deluded, no longer hesitated to strike the last 
blow. On 22d October 1685, he signed the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. The following were the chief 
provisions: — The abolition of Protestant worship 
throughout the land, under penalty of arrest of body 
and confiscation of goods. Ministers were to quit the 
kingdom in a fortnight, but if they would be converted 
they might remain and have an advance of salary. 
Protestant schools were closed, and all children born 
after the passing of the law, were to be baptized by 
the priests, and brought up in the communion of Rome. 
All refugees were to return to France in four months, 
and to abjure, otherwise their property was declared 
confiscate, under pain of the galleys for men, and im- 
prisonment for women. Protestants were forbidden to 
quit the kingdom, and to carry their fortunes abroad. 
All the strict laws concerning relapsing heretics were 
confirmed ; and finally, those Protestants who had not 
changed their religion, might remain in France until 
it should please God to enlighten them." This last 
sentence sounds bravely pious, and liberal, and many 
of the Protestants began to rejoice that at least private 
liberty of conscience remained to them ; but they soon 
found that the interpretation of it was, u until the dra- 
goons should convert them as they had converted whole 
provinces before." The provisions of the edict were 



THE HUGUENOTS. 63 

carried out with inflexible rigour. The pastors were 
driven into immediate banishment, the laity were for- 
bidden to follow them, but in spite of prohibitions and 
perils, in the face of the attainder and of the galleys, 
there were few abjurations and many refugees. Some 
crossed the frontier sword in hand, others bribed the 
guards and assumed all sorts of disguises ; ladies of 
quality might be seen crawling many weary leagues to 
escape at once from their persecutors and their country. 
Some put out to sea in frail and open boats, preferring 
the cruel chances of winds and waves, to the more 
cruel certainty of their fierce human oppressors ; and 
fair women who had lived all their lives in affluence, 
and whose cheeks the air of heaven had never visited too 
roughly, fled without food or store, save a little brackish 
water, or gathered snow by the road-side, with which 
the mothers moistened the parched lips of their babes. 
Protestant countries received the refugees with open 
arms. England, America, Germany, Switzerland, Den- 
mark, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, Holland — all profited by 
this wholesale proscription of Frenchmen. It is diffi- 
cult to estimate the numbers who escaped. Vauban 
wrote, a year after the Revocation, that Prance had 
lost 100,000 inhabitants, 60,000,000 of francs in specie, 
9000 sailors, 12,000 veterans, 600 officers, and her 
most flourishing branches of manufacture and trade. 
Siemondi considers the loss to have exceeded 800,000 
men; and Capefigue, the latest writer on the subject, 



64 THE HUGUENOTS. 

and an adversary to the Protestant cause, reports that at 
least 225,000 quitted the kingdom. But all are agreed 
that the refugees were among the bravest, the most loyal, 
and the most industrious in the kingdom, and that they 
carried with them the arts by which they had enriched 
their country, and abundantly repaid the hospitality 
which afforded them in other lands that asylum which 
was denied them in their own. 



So early as the latter half of the sixteenth century, 
thousands of French fugitives had taken refuge in 
England, from the persecutions which followed the 
massacre of St Bartholomew. The first French church 
in London was established in 1550, and owed its origin 
to the piety of King Edward VI., and to the powerful 
protection of Somerset and Cranmer. Churches were 
subsequently founded by successive emigrations, in 
Canterbury, Sandwich, Norwich, Southampton, Glas- 
tonbury, Dover, and several other towns; so that at 
the period when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, these 
were centres of unity around which the persecuted ones 
might rally. It is estimated that nearly eighty thousand 
established themselves in this country during the ten 
years which preceded or followed the revocation. About 
one-third of them settled in London, especially in the 
districts of Long Acre, Seven Dials, and Spitalfields. 
Scotland and Ireland received their share of refugees. 
The quarter in Edinburgh long known as Picardy, and 
French Church Street in Cork, are attestations of their 
presence there. The French Protestants were very effi- 

E 



66 THE HUGUENOTS. 

cient supporters of William of Orange, in those struggles 
for principle which drove the last of the Stuarts from 
the throne. The revolution in England was effected 
without bloodshed ; but in Ireland numbers of the re- 
fugees rallied round the Protestant standard. A refugee, 
de la Meloniere, was brigadier at the siege of Carrick- 
fergus ; a refugee, Marshal Schomberg, led the troops 
at the Battle of the Boyne ; and when William was 
established in London, and, breaking off diplomatic re- 
lations, enjoined the French ambassador to quit within 
twenty-four hours, by one of those caprices which are 
strangely like retribution, a refugee, De TEstang, was 
sent to notify his dismissal ; and a refugee, St Leger, 
received orders to escort him safely to Dover. 
^ The influence which the refugees exerted upon the 
trade and manufactures of the country was more wide- 
spread, and more lasting. The commercial classes of 
England ought, of all others, to feel grateful to the 
Protestants of France ; for the different branches of 
manufacture which were introduced by them have 
mainly contributed to make our " merchants princes, 
and our traffickers the honourable of the earth." They 
established a factory in Spitalfields, where silks were 
woven on looms, copied from those of Lyons and of 
Tours ; they taught the English to make " brocades, 
satins, paduasoys, velvets, and stuffs of mingled silk 
and cotton." They introduced also the manufacture 
of fine linen, of Caudebec hats, of printed calicoes, of 



THE HUGUENOTS. 67 

Gobelin tapestry, of sailcloth, and of paper. Most of 
these things had previously been obtained only by im- 
portation ; and where native manufactories were at 
work, they produced articles of coarser material, and of 
less elegant design. It has been ascertained by calcula- 
tion, that the manufactures introduced into this coun- 
try by these same despised Huguenot traders deprived 
France of an annual return of £1,800,000. There is 
an old proverb, " Whom the gods will destroy they 
first madden ;" and certainly the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes was not only an atrocious wickedness, but 
an act of unparalleled folly. 

Many of the refugees and their descendants attained 
honourable positions, and well served the country of 
their adoption in art, and science, and statesmanship, 
and jurisprudence, and literature, and arms. Thomas 
Savery, a refugee, was the inventor of a machine for 
draining marshes, and obtained a patent for it so long 
ago as 1698. Dennis Papin, a refugee, realised, a cen- 
tury before Watt watched the tea-kettle, the great idea 
of steam-power, and had a notion, which they called 
" a pretension" then, of navigating vessels without oars 
or sails. Saurin burst into the reputation of his elo- 
quence at the Hague ; but at the old French church in 
Threadneedle Street, he " preened his wings of fire." 
Abbadie discoursed with mild and earnest persuasion in 
the church at the Savoy, and then wrote, with ability 
and effect, from the deanery of Killaloe. The first literary 



68 THE HUGUENOTS. 

newspaper in Ireland was published by the pastor Droz, 
a refugee, who founded a library on College Green, in 
Dublin. The physician, Desaguliers, the disciple and 
friend of Newton ; Thelluson (Lord Kendlesham), a 
brave soldier in the Peninsular War, more distinguished 
than notorious ; Thelluson, the millionaire, the eccentric 
will-maker, more notorious than distinguished ; General 
Ligonier, who commanded the English army at the battle 
of Lawfield ; General Prevost, who distinguished him- 
self in the American War ; General cle Blaquiere, a 
man of high personal valour and military skill ; La- 
bouchere, formerly in the cabinet ; Lord Eversley, who, 
as Mr Shaw Lefevre, was the Speaker of the House of 
Commons; Sir John Komilly, the present Master of 
the Rolls ; Sir Samuel Romilly, his humane and accom- 
plished father ; Majendie, some time Bishop of Chester ; 
Saurin, once Attorney-General for Ireland ; Austen 
Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh, — all these, 
it is said, are descendants of the families of the French 
refugees. 

The descendants of the Huguenots long remained as 
a distinct people, preserving a nationality of their own, 
and entertaining hopes of return, under more favour- 
able auspices, to their beloved fatherland. In the lapse 
of years these hopes grew gradually fainter, and both 
habit and interest drew them closer to the country of 
their shelter and of their adoption. The fierce wars of 
the Republic, the crash of the first revolution, and the 



THE HUGUENOTS. 69 

threatened invasion of England by the first Napoleon, 
severed the last ties which bound them to their own 
land, and their affinities and sympathies being for the 
most part English, there was an almost absolute fusion 
both of race and name. 

One hardly knows, indeed, where to look for a 
genuine Saxon now, for the refugee blood circulates 
beneath many a sturdy patronymic, whose original 
wearer we might have sworn had lived in the Heptarchy, 
or trod the beechen glade in the times of Eanwolf and 
Athelstan. Who would suppose for a moment that 
there can lurk anything Norman in the colourless 
names of White and Black, or in the authoritative names 
of King and Masters, or in the juvenile name of Young, 
or in the stave-and-barrel-suggesting appellation of 
Cooper, or in the light and airy denomination of Bird ? 
Yet history tells us that these are the names now borne 
by those who at the close of the last century rejoiced 
in the designations of Leblanc, Lenoir, Loiseau, 
Lejeunes, Le Tonnellier, Lemaitre, Leroy. The fact 
was, that when Napoleon threatened to invade England 
— to which they owed so much — they felt ashamed of 
being Frenchmen, and translated their names into good 
sturdy Saxon. Thus did these noble men — faithful 
witnesses for God, brave upholders of the supremacy 
of conscience — enrich the revenues and vindicate the 
liberty of the land which had furnished them a home, 
and then, as the last tribute of their gratitude, they 



70 THE HUGUENOTS. 

merged their nationality in ours, and became one with 
ns in feeling, in language, in religion. \ 

Protestantism in France — oppressed by many restric- 
tions, suffering equally under a parricidal republic, and 
under a " paternal despotism " — yet lives and struggles 
on. Though small in its numerical extent, it does no 
unworthy work — though unostentatious in its simple 
worship, it bears no inglorious witness against apostasy 
and sin. There is hope for the future of France — hope 
in the dim streaks of the morning, that the day will 
come — hope in the hoariness of Popery, for it is dismally 
stricken in years — hope in the inability of scepticism 
and philosophy, falsely so called, to fill a national heart, 
around which an unsatisfied desire keeps for ever moan- 
ing like the wind around a ruined cairn — hope, above 
all, in the unexhausted power of that Divine Word, 
which, when it has free course, will be glorified ; and 
in the sure promise, faithful amid all change, that " the 
kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of 
our God and His Christ, and He shall reign for ever. 

And England, what of her? The dear old land — 
rich in ancestral memory, and radiant with a younger 
hope ; the Elim of palms and fountains in the exile's 
wilderness — whose soil the glad slave blesses as he leaps 
on her shores a freeman : England — standing like a 
rock in mid-ocean, and when the tempest howls else- 
where, receiving only the spent spray of the revolution- 
ary wave ; or as the ark in the deluge, the only mission 



THE HUGUENOTS. 71 

of the frantic waters being to bear it safely to the 
Ararat of rest : England — great by her gospel heritage, 
powerful by her Protestant privileges, free by her fore- 
fathers' martyrdoms — what of her ? Is she to be faith- 
ful or traitorous ? gifted with increasing prosperity, 
or shorn of her strength, and hasting to decay ? The 
nations of old have successively flourished and 
faded. Babylon and Carthage, Macedon and Persia, 
Greece and Kome — all in their turn have yielded to the 
law of decline. Is it of necessity uniform ? Must we 
shrivel into inanition, while "westward the course of 
empire takes its way ? " I may be sanguine, that is 
an error of enthusiasm — I may be proud of my birth- 
land, of all pride that is the least unholy — but both the 
patriot's impulse and the seer's inspiration prompt the 
answer, No — a thousand times No ! — if only there be 
fidelity to principle, to truth, to God. Not in the 
national characteristics of reverence and hope — reve- 
rence for the struggling past — hope in the beautiful 
future ; not in the absence of class antagonisms, nor in 
the fine community of interest in all things sacred and 
free ; not in the true practicalness of the British mind, 
doing, not dreaming, ever ; not in any or all of these, 
valuable and influential as they unquestionably are — 
put we our trust for the bright destiny of England. 
Her history has facts on record which we would do well 
to ponder. " One uniform connexion," as Dr Croly has 
accurately shewn, "between Romish ascendancy and 



72 THE HUGUENOTS. 

national disaster — between Romish discountenance and 
national renown." To the question of Voltaire, then, 
" Why has England so long and so successfully main- 
tained her free institutions ? " I would not answer, with 
Sir James Stephen, " Because England is still German/' 
though that may be a very substantial political reason ; 
but rather " Because England is still Protestant, with a 
glad gospel, a pure altar, an unsealed, entire, wide-open 
Bible/' Let her keep her fidelity, and she will keep 
her position, and there need be no bounds to the sacred 
magnificence of her preservation. For nations as for 
individuals, that which is right is safe. A godless ex- 
pediency or an unworthy compromise are sure avenues 
to national decline. Oh, if we would retain that in- 
fluence which, as a nation, we hold in stewardship from 
God, there must be no adulterous alliances between 
Truth and Error, no conciliations at the expense of 
principle, and an utter abhorrence, alike by church and 
cabinet and crown, of that corrupt maxim of a corrupt 
creed, that it is lawful " to do evil that good may come." 

" Do ill that good may come, so Satan spake ; 

Woe to the land deluded by that lie ; 
"Woe to its rulers, for whose evil sake 

The curse of God may now be hovering nigh : 
Up, England, and avert it ! boldly break 

The spells of sorceress Rome, and cast away 
Godless expedience ; say, Is it wise, 

Or right, or safe, for some chance gains to-day, 
To dare the vengeance from to-morrow's skies ? 

Be wiser thou, dear land, my native home 



THE HUGUENOTS. 73 

Do always good — do good that good may come. 
The path of duty plain before thee lies, 

Break, break the spells of the enchantress, Rome.* 

And now, at the close, let me repeat the sentiment 
advanced at the beginning, — God is working in the 
world, and, therefore, there shall be progress for ever. 
God's purpose doth not languish. Through a past of 
disaster and of struggle, " Truth for ever on the scaffold, 
Wrong for ever on the throne/' through centuries of 
persecution, with oppressors proud, and with con- 
fessors faithless, amid multitudes apostate and shame- 
hearted, with only here and there an Abdiel, brave, 
but single-handed — God has been always working, 
evolving, in His quiet power, from the seeming, the 
real, from the false, the true. Not for nothing blazed 
the martyrs' fires — not for nothing toiled brave sufferers 
up successive hills of shame. God's purpose doth not 
languish. The torture and trial of the past have been 
the stern ploughers in His service, who never suspend 
their husbandry, and who have "made long their 
furrows/' Into those furrows the imperishable seed 
hath fallen. The heedless world hath trodden it in, 
tears and blood have watered it, the patient sun hath 
warmed and cheered it to its ripening, and it shall be 
ready soon. " Say not ye, There are yet four months, 
and then cometh harvest? Lift up your eyes," and 
yonder, upon the crest of the mountain, the lone 
watcher, the prophet with the shining forehead, look- 



74 THE HUGUENOTS. 

ing out upon God's acres, announces to the waiting 
people — " The fields are white unto the harvest. 
Thrust in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe." But the 
Lord wants reapers. Who of you will go out, sickle in 
hand, to meet Him ? The harvest is ripe ; shall it 
droop in heavy and neglected masses, for want of 
reapers to gather it in ? To you, the young, in your 
enthusiasm — to you, the aged, in your wisdom — to 
you, men of daring enterprise and chainless ardour 
— to you, heirs of the rare endurance, and strong 
affection of womanhood — to you, the rich in the gran- 
deur of your equalising charity — to you, the poor, in 
the majesty of your ungrudging labour, the Master 
comes and speaks. Does not the whisper thrill you ? 
"Why stand ye here all the day idle?" Up, there's work 
for you all — work for the lords of broad acres, work 
for the kings of two hands. Ye are born, all of you, 
to a royal birthright. Scorn not the poor, thou 
wealthy — his toil is nobler than thy luxury. Fret not 
at the rich, thou poor — his beneficence is comelier than 
thy murmuring. Join hands, both of you, rich and 
poor together, as ye toil in the brotherhood of God's 
great harvest-field — heirs of a double heritage — thou 
poor, of thy queenly labour — thou rich, of thy 
queenlier charity — and let heaven bear witness to 
the bridal — 

The rich man's son inherits lands, 
And piles of brick, and stone, and gold, 



THE HUGUENOTS. 75 



And lie inherits soft white hands, 
And tender flesh that fears the cold, 
Nor dares to wear a garment old : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 

The rich man's son inherits cares, — 
The bank may break, the factory burn, 

A breath may burst his bubble shares ; 
And soft white hands could hardly earn 
A living that would serve his turn : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
One scarce would wish to hold in fee. 

"What doth the poor man's son inherit ? 
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart, 

A hardy frame, a hardier spirit ; 
King of two hands, he does his part 
In every useful toil and art : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
A king might wish to hold in fee. 

"What doth the poor man's son inherit ? 
A patience learn'd of being poor, 

Courage, if sorrow comes, to bear it, 
A fellow-feeling that is sure 
To make the outcast bless his door : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
A king might wish to hold in fee. 

Oh, rich man's son ! there i3 a toil 
That with all others level stands, 

Large charity doth never soil, 
But only whiten soft white hands ; 
This is the best crop from thy lands : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
Worth being rich to hold in fee. 



76 THE HUGUENOTS. 

Oh, poor man's son ! scorn not thy state, 
There is worse weariness than thine 

In merely being rich and great ; 
Toil only gives the soul to shine, 
And makes rest fragrant and benign : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
Worth being poor to hold in fee. 

Both, heirs to some six feet of sod, 
Are equal in the earth at last, 

Both, children of the same dear God, 
Prove title to your heirship vast, 
By records of a well-fill'd past : 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
Well worth a life to hold in fee. 



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